This rare and previously unpublished letter pleading for help from desperate survivors after the 1690 Schenectady massacre will be auctioned Oct. 10 at Swann Galleries in New York City. It was owned by an out-of-state private collector and is estimated to fetch $1,500 to $2,500. (Courtesy Swann Galleries) ORG XMIT: MER2013092010540761 less

This rare and previously unpublished letter pleading for help from desperate survivors after the 1690 Schenectady massacre will be auctioned Oct. 10 at Swann Galleries in New York City. It was owned by an ... more

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This rare and previously unpublished letter pleading for help from desperate survivors after the 1690 Schenectady massacre will be auctioned Oct. 10 at Swann Galleries in New York City. It was owned by an out-of-state private collector and is estimated to fetch $1,500 to $2,500. (Courtesy Swann Galleries) ORG XMIT: MER2013092010544262 less

This rare and previously unpublished letter pleading for help from desperate survivors after the 1690 Schenectady massacre will be auctioned Oct. 10 at Swann Galleries in New York City. It was owned by an ... more

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Colonial-era letter has a future in the region

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Schenectady

It ended up costing twice as much as a pre-auction estimate, but a rare Colonial-era letter that described fears of ongoing Indian attacks against settlers in the city's Stockade after a 1690 massacre is headed back to where it was written three centuries ago.

"I'm real glad it's coming home," said Melissa Tacke, librarian and archivist at the Schenectady County Historical Society. "It will be preserved and made available for use by scholars, educators and the general public for generations to come. A piece of the community's history would have been lost for those uses if it had stayed in private hands."

The historical society outbid other potential buyers and paid $4,400, plus the auction house's 25 percent buyer's premium, for a total of $5,500. The estimate had been $1,500 to $2,500 prior to the Oct. 10 auction at Swann Galleries in New York City.

The letter is expected to be shipped soon to the historical society.

After a Sept. 24 Times Union article and other media accounts said the letter, owned by an out-of-state private collector, would be sold at auction, 11 people contacted the historical society and made donations ranging from $100 to more than $1,000. Their money allowed the historical society to secure the letter with a maximum absentee bid over the phone, following spirited bidding on-site.

"We normally can't purchase manuscripts because we have a very small acquisition budget, which mostly covers books," Tacke said. "We're really grateful that people came forward to make it possible for us to purchase this."

The fact that the letter likely was written much later than previously believed did not hurt its value. It was believed to have been written shortly after a Feb. 8, 1690, attack by French Canadian soldiers aided by Sault and Algonquin Indians that killed 60 people — men, women, children and slaves — and burned the Stockade to the ground. The author of the letter also was unknown.

"The enemy doth surround us on every side, murdering some of our people in a most cruel & barbarous manner ... We are every moment in fear of our life," said the letter, addressed to Maj. John Alexander Glen in nearby Scotia. "We being abandoned & left to the mercy of the cruel enemy, we must abandon our houses and farms and our town & move to the lower parts of the province, to live in security, & should we & our families there be sustained? We heartily doubt."

Closer scrutiny of the letter and additional research by Tacke and others at the historical society determined that the letter was probably written by the Rev. Cornelius Van Santvoord, a minister who came to Schenectady in 1740 and died in 1752. He was fluent in English, Dutch and French. The letter was written in unusually fluent and nuanced English, rare for that period, and had a short note in Dutch with the initials CVS. The letter also mentioned a fort held at Crown Point, but the French did not construct a wooden fort there until 1730, later replacing it with one made of stone.

"As an archivist, the historical value of the letter is very high because it vividly illustrates the unease and fear people felt in the community for a long time after the 1690 massacre," Tacke said. "The letter captures the emotions of what it was like to live on this frontier settlement and how they felt being exposed to the danger of attacks for decades."